Quote

And so there are so many good things going on all across Iraq and unfortunately that's not what the American people see on TV or they don't read a lot about it in the newspapers.

The reality in Iraq is that we are creating new terrorists and severely damaging the public impression of the United States in the Muslim world.

There is not a great sense that the Americans know what they are doing, or are making much progress in Iraq. And there is satisfaction in seeing that the Iraqis are successful in resisting the United States.

The American people are so much stronger, so much more resolved than any enemy can fully understand.

It is hard as an American to support the failure of American military operations in Iraq. Such failure will bring with it the death and wounding of many American service members, and many more Iraqis.

But the key thing is that Iraq, while it's got very large oil reserves, has marginalized itself as an oil exporter and these days its exports are only about one tenth that of neighboring Saudi Arabia.

I know the war in Iraq is controversial in the States, but for us in the Middle East it has made a great and significant impact.

There's been an increase in the number of Iraqis in training, but more Americans are dying and violence is increasing.

It is a kind of ego booster, the way Egypt's winning the 1973 war, in the first stages, was an uplift. But I did not find when I spoke to people that the war in Iraq was seen as the major issue in American-Arab relations.